


Perfect

by shipitbetterthanfedex



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alya knows too, F/M, Fluff, Identity Reveal, She knows but he doesn't, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipitbetterthanfedex/pseuds/shipitbetterthanfedex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chat Noir is dying to know who his Lady is. She refuses to tell him. But she offers him a deal--a challenge. Will he succeed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> I like never post anything on this site so I don't know why this fandom compels me to do it. You guys are all really nice, I guess, so I hope you like whatever this is.

The streets of Paris were dark and cold, lit only by the flickering warmth of the streetlights and the glow of the moon. The Eiffel Tower rose in the distance, bright and graceful, with its own sense of energy and wonder. Two figures raced towards it, the sound of their laughter being stolen by the wind.

A child stopped his mother to point up at them. A man in a business suit turned at the sound of air being displaced above him, squinting into the distance. A teenage girl pulled out her cellphone to capture a glimpse of her idols.

She was only a red blur, her dark hair matching the night sky as it flew behind her. She reached the tower first, turning to greet him with a triumphant smile.

“I won again, _chaton._ ”

He shook his head at her, barely visible in the dark. All she could see clearly was his light hair and reflective eyes, looking up at her with a mixture of amusement and adoration. “I was distracted, my Lady.”

She pretended not to know what he was going to say next. “By what?”

“Your beauty.”

She laughed, the sound echoing into the city. “You can’t even see my face.”

“I still know that you’re beautiful,” he argued, walking towards her with his arms out for balance he didn’t really need, as if he were on a tightrope. “I can tell. It shines out from you, like . . . like a lighthouse. Guiding me home.”

She scoffed at his words. Every day his flirtatious lines got worse, and she was tired of it.

Once upon a time, hearing such compliments from the boy in front of her would have given her a heart attack. She would have smiled for the rest of the day, squealing into her pillow when she reached her bed, her kwami encouraging her with her never-ending words of wisdom. Alya would have called Marinette, screaming about how her chances with _the Adrien Agreste_ were finally looking up.

Once upon a time, hearing such compliments from the boy in front of her would have resulted in nothing more than an eye-roll and a finger on the bridge of his nose, pushing him away to go face whatever danger lay ahead of them. Alya would have recorded it and posted it on the Ladyblog, just another time Ladybug rejected Chat Noir.

Now, his words summoned a weight to sit on her chest until she could hardly breathe and tears to cloud her eyes until the city before her was nothing more than a blur of lights and shadows.

“I could tell you for sure,” he continued, oblivious to her reaction, “if—”

“No.”

There was a pause as he took a breath, already preparing his argument. He would never force her to share her identity, never reveal himself to her without her permission. He respected her boundaries and would never do anything to violate the trust she placed in him.

But he didn’t understand.

“My Lady, please,” he begged, not for the first time. “Let me see you. I can’t go another day not knowing who you are beneath your mask.”

She sighed. “You said that last week, _chaton,_ and yet here you are, alive and kicking.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

She had explained it time and time again. It was too dangerous. If they slipped up, if they showed too much interest, yelled the wrong name, made a single mistake, then Hawkmoth would know. He would target them, their families, their friends. It put everyone they loved in danger.

And yet she had known his identity for a month and none of this had happened.

“I know what you’re going to say. It’s unsafe, it puts a target on our backs, blah, blah, blah. But we’re already in danger. We risk our lives every day. And I know my friends, at least, are already constantly in the middle of our battles. I have a feeling yours are too.”

She didn’t confirm nor deny it.

“Think about it. We could warn each other about attacks. We could help each other find places to transform. We could avoid situations like the one with Volpina—if you’d known who I was, you would have known I was completely fine. And I would get to see who you are, we could finally—”

“Be together?” She laughed. “I doubt it.”

A hurt expression crossed his face. She realized what he thought she meant and hurried to correct it.

“It’s not because I don’t like you—the other you. In fact, I do. But you don’t see me—the real me—the same way you see Ladybug. You barely even notice me. If we were together, you would be dating Ladybug. Brave, funny, graceful. Perfect. You would be dating a lie.”

He was shaking his head before she had even finished. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re just as amazing without the mask as you are with it. And if I haven’t noticed you, I’m just an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

A small smile lit up his face at her teasing. “You must be _feline_ better. Your _cat_ -itude is back.”

She shook her head in exasperated amusement.

“But, Bugaboo, please just give me a chance? I’ll prove that you’re Ladybug no matter what.”

And she made the mistake of looking at him. His eyes were wide, earnest, reflecting the lights of Paris back to her. Pleading.

“If you figure out who I am without me telling you, I’ll believe you.”

The mother glanced up from her child’s now sleeping face; the businessman turned again in bewilderment; the teenage girl smiled from behind the screen of her laptop. They had all heard the same sound: a shout of victory.

 

“What’s up with you, dude?” Nino asked as he walked with his best friend into the school. “You look like you barely slept at all last night. Why are you so jittery?”

It was true. Adrien had stayed awake all night, unable to sleep with his challenge looming above his head. He had hid Lady’s permission to search for her, and he had spent the entire night thinking of everything he could use to find her. The facial features weren’t enough; Plagg had explained the magic behind the masks that made his mind skirt over any similarities he saw between Ladybug and her civilian form. Even if he noticed another girl with black pigtails and beautiful blue eyes, he wouldn’t be able to make the connection.

Instead, he thought of everything that made her amazing. Her bravery. Her selflessness. Her kindness. Her laugh. The way she stopped to help the akuma victims after an attack. The gleam in her eye as she flew through the city on patrol, her yo-yo flashing in the dark.

The list could go on forever, but Adrien decided to put it aside. All he had to do was pay attention to the people around him, and he was sure he would be able to find the love of his life.

“Coffee,” he told Nino, eyes skirting over him as he searched the hallways for someone he recognized. He knew it was futile—the magic prevented him from finding her with sight—but Adrien couldn’t stop himself.

“Are you alright?”

Nino’s voice held more concern than was normal for his laid-back attitude, and Adrien glanced at him in surprise. Was he that bad?

Thankfully, he was saved from answering (and lying) by the arrival of the rest of their ‘squad’, as Alya called it. He smiled briefly at Alya and Marinette, his eyes passing over them as he continued to look around for his Lady.

He missed the apologetic look Alya sent to her best friend, and the answering shrug she got in return.

The bell rang and the four of them walked inside. The others all chatted about their homework and upcoming events, but Adrien couldn’t make himself join in. She was here somewhere, and he just had to find her. If he found her, he could prove that he liked her in costume or out. And they could finally be together.

The day passed in a blur, with Adrien barely paying attention to anything his teachers said. _Lycée_ was supposed to be harder than _collège_ , but with Adrien’s homeschooling he was ahead of the rest of the class. However, that didn’t stop him from getting in trouble multiple times for spacing out.

“Sorry,” he would say, looking up from where he was doodling ladybugs in the corners of his pages. He swore he heard a sigh from behind him when he was called out, but he couldn’t be sure.

Was Ladybug in his class?

He spent the rest of the week studying almost every girl in class. Chloé was too cruel, Sabrina too lenient, Alix didn’t seem to care enough, Rose was too trusting, Juleka not trusting enough . . . the only two left were Marinette and Alya, and he spent too much time around them to not have noticed if they were Ladybug. He would have seen it.

So the search continued.

 

Marinette’s room had undergone a drastic change since she found out Chat Noir’s identity. Gone were the posters of Adrien, the ridiculous computer background, the schedule that was, admittedly, crossing a line. She had replaced it with photos of herself and Alya, and some with the rest of the ‘squad’. Sure, some included Adrien because he was her friend, but it was no longer bordering on stalking. She was moving on.

Alya had noticed the change as well, but she thankfully didn’t comment on it. Having her best friend know her identity was at first kind of terrifying, but after a while Marinette was grateful for her support. She was always a person to talk to about things that no one understood besides herself and Chat Noir, and he wasn’t an option. She couldn’t really open up to him without risking their identities being discovered.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped her from realizing his. It was when he had given her a bracelet, for good luck, when she was feeling down. He said it was given to him by a good friend, and that he knew she wouldn’t mind if he gave it away to someone else who needed it. He said she was a nice person.

Marinette had recognized it in an instant.

It hurt, hearing him talk about her civilian form with such indifference. He said she was a good friend, a nice person, but his eyes didn’t light up the way hers did when she spoke of him. He didn’t gaze off into the city thinking about the colour of her eyes, or sigh dreamily as he fantasized about a future with her. She would never be anything more than a friend to him.

The bracelet sat on her desk now, untouched since the day he gave it back to her. She couldn’t bear to hold it, to look at it, to even think about it. It was just a reminder of his feelings—or lack thereof.

Alya was sitting next to it, leaning back against the desk from her spot on the floor and flipping her phone around distractedly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Marinette shook her head and Alya nodded, letting it go. She wasn’t going to press if her friend didn’t want to—

“He’s just so oblivious.”

There it was. Alya waited while Marinette took her frustrations out on an innocent pillow on her chaise.

“He’s so nice, and considerate, and he’s never been anything but polite and kind to me. He’s a really good person, and he says he’s in love with me. But why can’t he see _me—_ the _real_ me—when I’m right in front of him?”

She buried her face in her pillow, barely noticing when Alya came over and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Isn’t it kind of the same thing you did with him, though?”

Marinette’s head snapped up and she glared at her friend in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve liked him since the—”

“I’m not talking about him as Adrien,” Alya interrupted her, patience etched into every word. “I mean as Chat Noir. He’s always been an amazing guy—he makes you laugh, you trust him with your life, he’s taken hits for you more times than any of us can count. But you didn’t notice him at all in that way until you realized he was Adrien.”

It was true. Marinette had made up her mind about Chat Noir the first time they met, deciding he was a flirt and completely insincere about his affections. He was nothing more than a friend. She ignored the way her heart fluttered around him, the way his stupid puns made her smile, the blush on her cheeks when he kissed her hand. It wasn’t until she had found out his identity that she started noticing all these little things.

“Are you saying we friend-zoned each other?”

Alya rolled her eyes at the term. “You know I hate that saying because of those stupid guys who think—”

“‘They’re entitled to a girl just because they have a crush on her’. Yes, Alya, you’ve given me the rant a million times. But I mean . . . we’ve both refused to see each other as anything more than a friend because we liked each other. Well, each _other_ other. The other version of each other. Mon dieu, this is confusing.”

Alya smirked. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”

Marinette sent her friend an annoyed look, but followed it immediately with a grateful smile. “Thanks, Alya.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” her friend replied, making Marinette reach over to wrap her arms around her best friend. “But you _so_ owe me an interview after this.”

 

The classroom was silent except for the muted sobs that could be heard through the door. Usually this was one of the loudest parts of the day, with everyone excited to start their lunch break, but today you could hear a pin drop in the silence. Kim and Alix shared a tense glance. Max set aside his calculator awkwardly. Rose bit her lip, looking out towards where Mylène had disappeared. Marinette felt Alya looking at her and she knew she had to do something.

“Chloé, what _was_ that?” she demanded, crossing over to the girl in question and curling her hands into fists, barely supressing the urge to punch the stupid smug look off her face.

“It was true,” Chloé argued with a toss of her hair. “ _Someone_ had to tell her that her hair looks like Medusa’s snakes. I was doing her a favour, really.”

Marinette grit her teeth. “Do you even _understand_ other people’s feelings? It’s like you don’t even care who you hurt! This is why everyone h—”

_Why everyone hates you._

Before she could finish her sentence, Marinette cut herself off. She wasn’t going to stoop to Chloé’s level. An insult like that was something you couldn’t go back from, and Marinette couldn’t bring herself to say that to anyone, not even Chloé. Even though she doubted the other girl cared what she thought of her.

Instead, she turned on her heel and ran out to find Mylène and make sure she was alright.

 

Adrien had watched the entire exchange with guilt weighing down his chest heavily. He knew that if it were him standing up to Chloé, she might actually listen. Marinette’s words were true, and everyone knew it, but they seemed to bounce right off Chloé like she was inside a bubble of her own ignorance.

“What an idiot,” she said now, throwing her feet up on her desk and crossing her arms with an air of indifference. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s just some stupid bitch—”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

Everyone turned towards the unexpected voice, only to see Adrien standing there with anger written clearly in every line of his face. Chloé was the most surprised of all, her mouth open in shock at seeing her ‘Adrikins’ calling her out, defending _Marinette_ of all people.

“What? It’s true.”

“No, it’s not, and you know it.” Adrien stalked over to his childhood friend and slammed a hand down on her desk. “Marinette is the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever met, and she doesn’t deserve anything you dish out to her. _Especially_ not after standing up for one of the most sensitive people in class from some shallow, self-centered girl who takes out her insecurities on everyone else.” His voice softened. “What happened to you, Chlo?”

He wasn’t expecting her to cry. He wasn’t expecting much of what had taken place in the last few minutes, but it had all happened. He didn’t know where that came from, but he felt an instinct to protect Marinette, to shelter her from anything that could possibly hurt her, even if she wasn’t around to hear it. It was a strangely familiar feeling, but Adrien didn’t have time to dwell on it.

He instinctively moved to comfort Chloé, but she pulled away. “Go find your girlfriend if you want to hug someone,” she spat.

He didn’t have the heart to argue with her about the fact that Marinette was _definitely not his girlfriend why would you say that,_ so without another word he turned to the door.

He was just opening it to leave when he ran into someone. Or, rather, two someones.

“Adrien!” Marinette said in shock, staring at him for a second in surprise before recovering quickly and brushing gently past him with her arm around a still-upset Mylène, who thankfully had stopped crying at some point and was now walking with her head down towards her desk.

It was then, watching Marinette bend down to whisper some comforting words into her friend’s ear, that everything clicked.

_Of course._

How did he not see it before? Her humour and intelligence, the way she stood up for the underdog and defended her friends, how she comforted and protected people she cared about, always making sure they were okay . . .

Before he knew it, Adrien had crossed over to where Marinette was standing, about to sit back down. His arms wrapped around her as if of their own accord and he buried his face in her hair, ignoring everyone around them and breathing in the familiar scent of pastries and vanilla. _Of course._

“Adrien?” she whispered, her arms hesitantly encircling his waist in return.

_It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you._

He didn’t realize he was speaking out loud until she squeezed him gently and laughed.

“It’s me.”

 

Alya looked up from her Ladyblog, where she was just uploading a video of her exclusive interview with none other than Ladybug herself, to see a black blur flying past her window, a laugh echoing behind him. The red shape that followed paused for a second to send her best friend a wave, which she returned with no small degree of amusement.

_Kids these days._

The two shapes continued to the Eiffel Tower, where this time it was him waiting for her.

“It seems I won this time, Princess.”

She smiled at him, not having the energy to muster an annoyed frown. “It seems you did, _mon minou_.”

“Might I ask why?”

“I was distracted.”

He grinned at her. “By my _paws_ -itively _meow_ -velous looks?”

She rolled her eyes in return. “No, by something else.”

There was a serious note to her voice underneath the teasing, and he caught it immediately. He sat down carefully, gesturing to the spot next to himself in an invitation. _Join me?_

She accepted and for a long moment they just sat together, looking out over the city they both loved as she gathered her thoughts.

“How did you know?”

He glanced at her in surprise. He thought it was obvious when he had noticed her for the first time. Surely his thoughts were written on his face, as easy to read as a book. Did she really not know?

“Because you’re amazing.”

She gave him a look, but he didn’t back down. He said he would prove that she was Ladybug, no matter what, and that was what he intended to do.

“When you defended Mylène from Chloé—that had Ladybug written all over it. Confident, strong, standing up for what’s right—it was like you were wearing the suit right then and there. But I’m an idiot, so that wasn’t when I realized. After that, Chloé insulted you and I suddenly felt so protective, the way I always feel when you’re being targeted and I can’t help but throw myself in front of you. I yelled at her—Alya recorded it, apparently, so you can watch it—and I should’ve realized then that I cared about you so much, the way I do for . . . well, you. Ladybug. But it wasn’t until you came in the door, comforting Mylène the way you help so many people after they’ve been akumatized, that I finally saw it. How compassionate and caring you are, how you protect others no matter what the consequences are to yourself—you were right in front of me this whole time, and I couldn’t even see you.”

She smiled, though she felt tears burning the backs of her eyes. “So I was right. You didn’t notice me.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, tugging harshly on the ends of it. She took his hand and placed it back on his lap. He looked at her. “I’ve been noticing you this whole time, but I didn’t notice myself noticing. I’ve been in love with you—Marinette—since the beginning. I just didn’t admit it to myself. I was too blinded by my love for Ladybug—for _you_ —to see my love for you—I mean, the _other_ you—this isn’t making any sense, I’m sorry, I should—”

She cut him off by pressing her lips against his, just once, so quickly he wasn’t sure if it had actually happened or if he had imagined it. But the way she was looking at him, and the way his lips were tingling as if they’d been shocked, seemed like proof that it was real.

Still . . .

“Did you just kiss me?”

The disbelief and utter elation in his tone made her laugh, and he ducked his head in embarrassment. She gently placed a finger under his chin and lifted his face to hers for a second time, stopping when their lips were barely an inch apart.

“That depends. Did you want me to?”

He felt her breath mix with his own and that was enough to drive him over the edge. He kissed her, trying to convey all his desperation and joy and relief into one kiss. It wasn’t perfect, like he had always imagined—it was his first real kiss, he wasn’t an expert—but he felt her smile against his mouth and decided that he didn’t care.

Maybe it didn’t matter if everything went according to plan. Maybe it didn’t matter if your life was a mess, full of confusion and misunderstandings and insecurities. Maybe all that was important was that you spent it with the people you cared about, and that you were as happy as you could be in all the chaos that life threw at you. Maybe all that mattered was that you loved, and were loved.

Maybe perfect was relative.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment if you liked it! And if you didn't like it. Just give me attention tbh I live off of it


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